Last night I took a few hours to implement basic wind behavior in the game. After all, a game set in the "Age of Sail" definitely should have wind affect the whole trading system. Wind severely affects the ships' speed, thus it also affects travel time and which trade routes are more profitable than others.

Moving a fully-loaded galleon against a strong wind could prove to be frustrating and almost impossible, while your small and sleek schooner (full of illegal goods, of course) can ride the waves swiftly when the air is blowing in the right direction, so no pirates or port authorities will ever dream of catching you and your ill-gotten rum.

From a technical point of view, this basic wind implementation has two parameters that define it. Yes, you guessed right, speed and direction. Those two parameters slowly change over time. The wind speed changes in such a way that it will always try to remain around an average value, with a few calm days and a few windy ones. Here y…

This are just some in-game screenshots to show how far the development of Winds of Trade got until now (a clue: not very far). Please take into consideration that almost all assets (except for the ships themselves) are just placeholder assets or 3d models I borrowed from the web in order to test. Same goes for the UI, it's just something I made in 5 minutes in order to visualize progress and it's not the final product.

My idea is to update this blog in (hopefully) a weekly fashion with any news related to the development of Winds of Trade. What the hell is Winds of Trade, you might be wondering... If so, just take a look at the sidebar.

What are the objectives for this blog? Well:

1) Create a community around the game-to-be.
2) Provide insight into the development process that an indie game goes through.
3) Discuss topics related to the most challenging technical aspects of game development. This includes a bit of game design, a bit of UX, a bit of algorithm design and analysis...
4) Receive feedback on the way I'm doing things.

What is WoT?

Winds Of Trade is a strategy game about running an ocean trading company in the 18th and 19th centuries. Building your trading empire will not be your only goal! Ruthless pirates, shady smugglers, wartime and fierce competitors will make the way to the top a long and hard road for you!